Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  For Vaughan Davies’s ‘hands of God’, therefore, read ‘human species subconscious’. If I were a physicist myself, I could make this clearer to you.

  Leaving aside all this ‘new past as well as new future’ nonsense, it is just about possible to make a case in theory for Vaughan Davies’s ‘fracture’ – or at any rate, it is not possible to prove that it could NOT happen. If deep consciousness sustains the universe, one supposes deep consciousness might change the universe. And then the leftovers of the change – like a written-over file leaving bits of data in the system (you see how cognisant I am becoming of computers!) – would remain, to puzzle historians like Vaughan Davies.

  Of course, not being able to prove something cannot happen is very far from proving it CAN happen; and Davies’s theory remains one with the esoteric speculations of some of our modern physicists. But it has a certain beauty as a theory, don’t you think?

  I am very interested to know if he wrote anything between the publication of ASH: A BIOGRAPHY in 1939 and his death later in the war. Is there news?

  – Pierce

  * * *

  Message: #124 (Pierce Ratcliff)

  Subject: Vaughan Davies

  Date: 27/11/00 at 03.52 p.m.

  From: Longman@

  Pierce –

  Okay, okay. I’ll go to Sible Hedingham. Nadia says she’s going down again anyway.

  I’m getting moderate media interest. I think it will depend on whether it’s decided that the political-military problems you’re having on-site make you too hot to handle, or whether it’s those same problems that make you interesting and a probable media ‘cause’.

  Jonathan Stanley’s handling that. I’m trying to keep him on general grounds. Even though your archaeologist found Troy where a poem said it was, I don’t really want to have to explain that the manuscripts you’ve translated are in any way questionable. I’ll handle that when I HAVE to.

  The Vaughan Davies stuff is fascinating, isn’t it? Is this guy crazy or WHAT? I thought it was only the present moment that could be made into reality, and so become history? How could there be *two* histories of the world? I don’t get it. But then, I’m no scientist, am I?

  It’s okay for you, Pierce, you can play around with theories, but I have to work for a living! One history is more than enough. It’s going to take some neat handling by me to get this all to go right. When you finally meet him, for God’s sake don’t go telling Jon Stanley about all this! I can do without him telling me one of my authors is a mad professor.

  – Love, Anna

  * * *

  Message: #202 (Anna Longman)

  Subject: Ash

  Date: 01/12/00 at 01.11 p.m.

  From: Ngrant@

  Anna –

  I don’t know how to tell you what has happened.

  I’m handing you over to Isobel.

  * * *

  Message: #203 (Anna Longman)

  Subject: Ash

  Date: 01/12/00 at 02.10 p.m.

  From: Ngrant@

  Ms Longman –

  At Pierce’s request, I am conveying to you some very unfortunate news. I regret that it will have an effect on the publication of his book, as well as on our expedition here.

  As you know, the great ‘find’ of this dig has been the Visigothic ‘messenger-golems’ – one intact and complete, one in remnants. Because the fragmentary golem was already in pieces, I chose that one to be sent off to be tested.

  Among the tests we do is C14 radio carbon-dating. When it comes to marble and other forms of stone, dating an object by this method is impossible – one merely gets the age of the rock before it was carved into an object. However, the ‘messenger-golems’ also include several metallic parts. The broken one had sections of a ball-joint for one arm.

  I have now had the radio-carbon dating report back on this bronze joint. I have also doubled-checked with our archaeometallurgist here.

  Bronze is an alloy of copper, tin and lead. These metals are smelted together and then cast. During the casting process, when the metal is poured, organic impurities can become mixed in; and a study of the crystalline structure of this joint, when shaved down, showed that just this sort of impurity *had* become incorporated into the structure.

  When subjected to radio-carbon dating, these organic fragments gave an extremely odd reading. The tests were repeated, and repeated again.

  The lab report, which arrived today, states that in their opinion, the readings show that the organic fragments in the metal contain the same levels of background radiation and pollution as one would expect to find in something which has been growing today.

  It seems that the metal for the joints and hinges of the ‘messenger-golems’ must have been cast during a period of much higher radiation and atmospheric pollution than existed in the fifteenth-century – indeed, a high enough level to make me certain the metal was cast during the last forty years (post-Hiroshima and atomic testing).

  I am left with only one possible conclusion. These ‘messenger-golems’ were not made in the 1400s. They were made recently, possibly very recently. Certainly after the date that, as Pierce tells me, Charles Wade brought the ‘Fraxinus’ document back to Snowshill Manor.

  Frankly; these ‘golems’ are modern fakes.

  I have had little enough time myself to take in this news. Pierce is shattered. You realise that one of the reasons for the extreme security of the dig is that such things do happen in archaeology – fakes are a constant problem – and I never make any announcements until I am sure.

  I realise that this leaves Pierce with documents that have been re-classified as fiction, rather than history, that now have no significant archaeological evidence to support them.

  I expect that you will want to consider this news before you make any decisions about publication of Pierce’s translations.

  Colonel ██████ has authorised offshore diving to resume at first light tomorrow. Despite our problems, I am reluctant to lose any opportunity, given the political instability of the region. I am no longer sure if the images from the ROV cameras are relevant, but of course we shall be following up this area of investigation.

  We shall therefore be leaving for the ship at daybreak. I think, if you could contact Pierce, he would appreciate a kind word.

  I am so sorry. I wish I could have brought you better news.

  – Isobel Napier-Grant

  * * *

  Message: #137 (Pierce Ratcliff)

  Subject: Ash / archaeology

  Date: 01/12/00 at 02.31 p.m.

  From: Longman@

  Pierce, Isobel–

  ARE YOU SURE?

  – Anna

  PART EIGHT

  10 September–11 September AD 1476

  ‘Ferae Natura Machinae’

  I

  The darkness went on for what seemed hours.

  Ash had no way of judging the time. The world was anything she could feel with her fingertips, at arm’s length, in cold blackness. Brick, mostly; and damp nitre. Mud or shit underfoot. She found the darkness reassuring. No light must mean no breaks in the sewer-covering: therefore these particular brick passages could be safe to traverse.

  If there are no pits. No shafts.

  If I were with Roberto, now, we’d get drunk. Talk about Godfrey. I’d get so drunk I couldn’t stand up. I’d tell him Godfrey was always a damn peasant at heart. One time I saw him call boar. Wild boar, out of the forest! And they came. And I forget how many times he’s listened to me when I needed to talk to someone who wasn’t one of my officers—

  Not a father. Who needs fathers? Leofric calls himself a father. A friend. Brother. No, more than a brother; what would it have cost me to love you, just once? Just once?

  Falling-down drunk. And then we’d go off and get into a fight somewhere.

  Jesus, what’s Roberto going to say when I tell him this?

  If Robert’s alive.

  The sound of water running deep and smooth ahead of he
r made her slow her steps. The wall under her fingertips turned a corner. She paced slowly forward around it, putting her feet down toes-first, testing for broken ground.

  The sewers went on.

  I shouldn’t leave him.

  I can’t do anything else.

  I could ask my voice for the way out of here— no, it doesn’t know places, it only solves problems—

  Can I even talk to the Stone Golem, now?

  Other – voices?

  What are they?

  Does Leofric know? Did the Caliph know? Does anybody know? Christ, I want to talk to Leofric! Did anybody know anything about this before today?

  I shouldn’t have left him.

  Pale light made geometric shapes on her retinas.

  Ash stopped, her bleeding hand still touching brickwork. The light was strong enough to show her what planes and surfaces it illuminated. A junction of tunnels. Flat walls, curving walls, sweeping up to a cracked roof that let in faint light. Running water. Walkways. Rubble.

  This could go on for miles. And it could all come down on my head any second. The earthquake must have shaken a lot of stonework loose.

  A noise.

  ‘Valzacchi?’ she called, softly.

  Nothing.

  Ash raised her head. Above, four or five stones had fallen from the tunnel roof. Enough to let through a faint glow of Greek Fire. She thought she heard a confused noise, this time outside, but it faded as she strained to listen.

  How long before the rest of this part of the sewer collapses?

  Time to be somewhere else.

  Unexpected grief bit at her. Her eyes flooded over with tears. She wiped them on her sleeve. She had a moment of knowing, beyond doubt, her responsibility. And I can never say to you that I’m sorry you came here because of me.

  Ash pressed her filthy hands over her face, once. She raised her head. Grief will come, she knows, in seconds and minutes when she does not expect it; will bite harder when this shock fades and she accepts into herself the knowledge that – when the reasons are found, the responsibilities accepted, her confession made – it does not matter. It does not change the fact that she will never speak to Godfrey again; he will never answer her.

  She whispered, “Goodnight, priest.”

  Something white and moving caught her eye.

  Her hand flashed to her belt and met only the empty scabbard. She flattened her back against the tunnel wall, staring ahead.

  Something small and white scuttled across the walkway and off into the darkness.

  Ash stepped cautiously forward. Her sandals grated on brick. Two more white things darted off out of her way in a low-slung scuttling run.

  “Rats,” Ash whispered. “White rats?”

  If the earthquake breached the sewers built under the Citadel’s streets, could it have breached the walls of the houses cut down into the rock? Am I near House Leofric?

  Maybe.

  Maybe not. If they are his freak rats, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m close. Rats can move a long way; it’s got to have been an hour since the quake, maybe more.

  “Hey, ratsies…” Ash chirruped softly. Nothing moved in the dim light.

  A thought came into her mind, of what rats might feed on, down here. She glanced back, into darkness.

  “Godfrey…”

  She began to edge around the corner of the junction, treading silently, unwilling to disturb the air and the cracked brickwork shell above her head. She stopped. She looked back.

  “You won’t approve, Godfrey… You always said I was a heathen. I am. I don’t believe in mercy and forgiveness. I believe in revenge – I’m going to make somebody hurt because you’re dead.”

  A distant chittering echoed from further down the sewer.

  The sweet stench of shit grew worse. Ash started to walk on, with her wet sleeve clamped over her nose. She had nothing left to vomit up. Water flowed sluggish and silent below the brick walkway.

  The last light from the cracked roof caught on an irregularity in the wall. She reached out, touched brick, touched darkness – touched emptiness.

  With her fingertips, she traced out a long brick slot, as tall as her two hands together. She tentatively reached in. Her knuckles barked on bricks and mortar, no great distance in front of her. Frowning, she slid the flat of her hand up the wall in front of her, and her palm slipped into air, into another slot. And above that, another.

  The lower edge of each slot had a lip, made of brick, perhaps two inches thick, and three inches high. Strong enough to bear a man’s grip and a man’s weight.

  Gladness flooded her. She breathed in, unawares; coughed at the sweet stench, and laughed aloud, her eyes running. She slid her hands up and down the surface of the wall, to be sure there was no mistake. As high over her head as she could reach, the brickwork had slots built into it. And it was not a curving wall, not here at this junction of tunnels: the wall above her went straight up.

  Ash reached up and put her hands into one slot, her foot into another, and began to climb the wall.

  The first fifteen or twenty feet were easy enough. Her arms began to ache. She risked leaning back to look up. The broken part of the pipe might be fifty or sixty feet above her, still.

  She reached for the next slot in the brickwork ‘ladder’ and hauled her sopping weight upwards. Distracting herself from the physical, she let her mind ramble:

  I think the ‘voices’ are speaking through the machine, through the Stone Golem. They come into my spirit the same way. But they’re not like my voice.

  Does anybody know this? Does the Faris know? How long have they been doing it? Do they tell her things, through the Golem – do they pretend to be the Stone Golem? Maybe nobody knows. Until now.

  Suppose that the machina rei militaris has been in House Leofric for two centuries, suppose that these – others – have been speaking through it? Or are they a part of it? A part that Leofric doesn’t know about? But does he?

  Ash resolutely kept the part of her mind that listened, quiet.

  She reached up above her head, biceps aching, and hauled herself up another rung. Her thighs and calves burned. She absently glanced down and saw, past the length of her body, how far up she was.

  Forty feet on to brick, or into a sewer, is high enough to kill.

  She pushed herself on, upwards.

  And supposing it’s these ‘voices’ that hate Burgundy? Why Burgundy? Why not France, Italy, the empire of the Turks? I know the Burgundian Dukes are the richest, but this isn’t about wealth; they want the land burned black and sown with salt – why?

  Ash rested, leaning her forehead against the brickwork. It felt chill. Mortar grated dustily.

  She had to twist around now to see the broken part of the roof, above her and to the side. A stone lip was cutting her off from it. The steps led up – she raised her head – into a narrow roof shaft. Within it, darkness. No way of telling what might be up there.

  She clung, puzzling, shivering in her wet and filthy clothes. She abruptly smiled into the darkness.

  That’s it. Of course. That’s why the Visigoths have attacked Burgundy, not the Turks! The Turks are a bigger threat, but the machine’s been telling them that its solution is for them to attack Burgundy. That has to be it! But it isn’t the Stone Golem, it’s the voices!

  Ash clenched her fingers on the rung. Her muscles jabbed at her with cramps. She dug her toe deep into the rung and flexed her leg, straightening it; reaching with her other foot for a rung higher up.

  If some other amir’s family has created another Stone Golem … that would be known! Even Leofric never tried to keep it secret. Just secure. But if it isn’t another clay machine, what is it – what are they?

  Whatever they are, they know about me.

  She moved into darkness, head and shoulders and the rest of her body, as she climbed up into the shaft. If it leads nowhere I shall just have to climb down again, she thought, and then: So they know about me now. Good. Good.

 
I’ve lost my people. I’ve lost Godfrey. I’ve had enough.

  “You better damn well hope you know me,” Ash whispered. “Because I’m going to find out about you. If you’re machines, I’ll break you. If you’re human, I’ll gut you. Messing with me may just be the stupidest thing you ever did.”

  She smiled in the darkness at her own bravado. Her fingers, reaching up, touched brick and metal. She stopped.

  Feeling carefully, she touched dusty stone, directly above her head, and a rim of cold iron. Within the rim, more metal – a circular iron plate, about a yard across.

  Ash settled her feet as far as they would go into the brick rungs she stood on. She gripped a rung with her left hand. With her right hand flat against the metal, she pushed up.

  She expected resistance, was thinking shit I need to get my back under this and I can’t and it took her by surprise as the metal cover flew up and back and off. A bolt of cold air hit her in the face. Greek Fire blazed, dazzling her. She fell forward, mashing her face against the brick ladder, almost losing her hold.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  She shoved her body up two more steps and groped outside, for something to haul herself out by. Nothing. Her fingertips scraped stone. The port was too wide for her to brace herself across it.

  In one movement, she got both feet up to a higher rung, let go with her left hand, straightened her legs and pushed herself up, and dived heavily forward.

  Momentum carried her: she sprawled out across a road, her thighs and the rest of her legs dangling over the abyss but her body safe. She put her palms down flat, and wriggled her body forward, and rolled, jack-knifing; not stopping the roll until she was a good ten feet away from the open sewer-port.

  In a narrow alley between windowless buildings.

  One glass of Greek Fire burned, twenty yards away. The others, closer to her, were smashed. A few yards down the alley, the paving stones ominously sagged.

  Her night-adjusted eyes ran with water. She shook her head, getting up on to her hands and feet; the wet wool of her hose and doublet clinging to her, rapidly freezing in the black air.